The NatCen Blog

Here we’ll be talking about our research in the context of the latest news, opinion andanalysis through comments from our team of experts. We’d love to hear from you, so post comments or get in touch with us.

Despite an economy that ranks alongside some of the strongest in Europe, poverty in Scotland persists. Ian Montagu explains how one charity's work to tackle food insecurity brings more than just nutritional benefits.

A closer analysis of the first four waves of Understanding Society shows that a quarter (25%) of all adults have said that they were finding it difficult to cope financially at least once during 2009-2013.

In July 2014, the government published its consultation document to help develop a new fuel poverty strategy for England (Cutting the Cost of Keeping Warm: A new fuel poverty strategy for England consultation document). This is the first such strategy in over a decade and underlines the importance of government policy as a lever in helping to address this issue.

With record numbers of people relying on charities to eat, the debate about food poverty in the UK has intensified. In September 2013 Michael Gove controversially claimed that those who use such charities ‘have only got themselves to blame’ for mismanaging their finances. More recently Iain Duncan Smith has been engaged in a heated, public row with the charity sector about UK food poverty. On the other side of the debate, in Walking the breadline, food poverty is described as a ‘national disgrace’. Some would argue that, long before the controversy and debate, there have always been demographic groups for whom accessing food is profoundly difficult in the UK. For example, homeless people, those addicted to drugs and alcohol and those fleeing domestic abuse.

For many, the introduction of grammar schools signaled a step forward for meritocracy and social mobility, with the aim of getting the best out of bright pupils from all backgrounds. Critics however have argued that grammar schools can be socially divisive. A recent IFS report shows that just 2.7% of entrants to grammar schools are entitled to free school meals. In comparison, around 16% of pupils are eligible for free school meals in state secondary schools in England.

Today David Cameron has announced plans for a network of "troubleshooters" to give more focused support to England's most troubled families. He’s promised to turn around the lives of 120,000 families who have multiple problems and complex, chaotic lives. This is a joined-up policy solution for families with complicated problems based on joined-up evidence. And much of that evidence has come from two vital research initiatives led by us: the Families and Children Study (FACS) and Family Interventions assessment.

On Universal Children’s Day last month, the UK Children's Commissioners warned the government that cuts to children’s services could result in the number of children living in poverty increasing. This will make it even more unlikely that the government will meet its 2020 deadline for the eradication of child poverty, first set out by Tony Blair in 1999.

Demos and NatCen, with the support of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, have joined forces for a major new research project – one which aims to radically expand the way we think about poverty as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. The project will involve complementary qualitative and quantitative research, and here Claudia Wood, Deputy Director at Demos, introduces the Multidimensional Poverty Project.

As Westminster debates whether the riots were the work of a ‘feral underclass’, new evidence is published of an intervention that is effective in helping ‘troubled’ families. Family Intervention Projects as they were originally known, were set up to work with challenging and anti-social families. Clarissa White manages the ongoing evaluation of Family Intervention Projects, and here she elaborates on the findings published today by the DfE.